


Sisyphus had a Brother

by evelynIttor



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Curses, Gen, bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-20 01:30:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1491772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evelynIttor/pseuds/evelynIttor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean cares about Sam, well because he does. There's definitely not a curse involved. Right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sisyphus had a Brother

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for [this prompt](http://letskinkjensen.livejournal.com/2869.html) on letskinkjensen meme.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Sam asks, the mix of lemon juice and rabbit’s blood poised to spill onto their father’s journal. The unspoken question, of what if there’s actually something written there, hangs in the air between them.

“Not much to lose.” Dean shrugs. “Do it.” 

Sam pours the mix out and they both turn their heads away. When they poured this stuff over the dead girl’s diary it had erupted in a shower of sparks and blood.

There was a fizzle and the liquid soaked into the pages of John’s journal, running down across the paper.

“Anything?” Dean turns back, scanning for words. They could use some help, time’s running out and he wants to find something to stop it, or even just slow it down.

“It’s faint.” Sam pours a little more of the decoder solution over the paper and there’s another little fizzle. “I think there’s something.”

“Wow, Dad didn’t seem like the invisible ink kinda guy.” Dean leans closer to the paper. The writing here is different, pinched and hurried, unlike the rest of the journal. “What is this?”

Sam’s head moves as he scans down the page. “It looks like a spell. There’s ingredients, oh…” 

“What?” Dean’s still trying to figure out what’s written at the top of the page in loopy letters that he can’t imagine his head writing.

“It’s a curse.” Sam says. “And Dad didn’t write this. This woman, Hannah, wrote it out for him. There’s a note here at the end, she says, John, if you’re really going to do this, be careful. Then she signs her name and there’s nothing else.”

“So that’s it? A curse and some lady named Hannah?” Dean decides to skip over the title and starts reading about the components of the curse. “Wait a second. What does this curse do?”

Sam looks at the part he’s pointed out. “It’s a binding. Like the myth of Sisyphus, how he spent his life pushing the boulder up the mountain. The subject of the curse has to perform some duty for their entire life.”

He snaps the journal shut. “I’m going out.”

Dean raises his eyebrows. “Really? That’s usually my line.” But Sam ignores him and a couple of minutes later Dean hears the growl of the Impala’s engine 

Sam doesn’t come back that night. Not that Dean really cares, not like he misses him or anything. Really, a night where he can watch porn on the motel’s black and white tv and sharpen his knives is a bonus. He’s spent most of his life less than ten feet away from his brother. He’s going to enjoy his break.

Sam’s there in the morning, with coffee and breakfast pastries. “Hey.”

Dean yawns and gets out of bed to take one of the large coffees from the table.

“Dean, do you think Dad used that curse?”

“What? On who?” The coffee’s lukewarm now, he doesn’t want to think about how long Sam’s been sitting there waiting for him to wake up.

“I think Dad used that curse on you Dean.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Dean takes the plastic container of pastries back to his bed and crawls back under the covers.

“Think about it!” Sam’s standing up now, his voice is changing, he’s going into speech mode. “Actually think about it Dean, Dad used it on you, to make you take care of me. Honestly, what sixteen year old actually wants to spend time with his twelve year old brother? You spent your childhood devoted to me!”

“And later on, when I came back, after you sought me out, remember what happened? We’re in a bind right now because you had to do whatever it took. You couldn’t stand being without me! I have no idea how you made it through my years at Stanford, it should have killed you!”

Dean’s mouth is full of flakey pastry coating so he can’t say anything for a moment, but he doesn’t agree.

“That’s ridiculous Sam. You’re my brother, sure I care about you. But not because of some curse. We’re family. Besides, when you were younger, you were the only person that I could talk to about hunting. And you were my responsibility when Dad was gone. I was looking out for you, like an older brother!”

“Dad trusted me Sam! I did what he asked. He said to look after you and guess what, I did! He didn’t need a curse to keep me in line.” 

Sam crosses his arms. “I’m going to take a shower and then we should leave. There have been some demon signs in northern Pennsylvania.”

“Fine.” Dean leaned back in his bed and stuck the last pastry in his mouth. Because Sam was being stupid and there was no way that Dad would have done something like that.

\--

“Shut up and hold still.” Dean growled, trying to thread the sterilized needle with dental floss. “You’re getting blood all over the bed.”

“Hurry up.” Sam growled back, his right shoulder twitching when Dean reached towards it with the needle.

Dean dug his knee harder into Sam’s stomach. “Don’t move. Your luck might not be bad anymore but I don’t want to risk it and lose the needle inside your shoulder. Might screw up your ability to use your arm.”

It was a white knuckled and breathless fifteen minutes that followed. Dean put six stitches into the bullet wound that Bela had given his brother and followed that with half a bottle of whiskey and a bandage. 

“Here.” He pulled a bottle of pills out of the first aid kit. “There are some antibiotics left. You still had bad luck when you got shot. I’m not risking it.”

Sam took the antibiotic pills and moved to the bed not covered in blood and alcohol.

Dean waited until he was asleep to leave. Not because he was trying to keep this secret, not because he thought that Sam might be right.

He had spent days pouring over Dad’s journal. Sam had thought that he was looking for a way out. That was all that Sam had been doing. But Dean just couldn’t focus on that right now, he needed to think about this, about whether his life was actually his. And now, Dad’s storage locker wasn’t far, if there was anything his old man had been hiding, why wouldn’t it be hidden in his secret storage locker?

There wasn’t anything. Not in the boxes of papers, not scribbled in the margins of books that John Winchester had kept hidden away. Nothing to say that he might have bound Dean to his brother for good.

The sun was coming up when Dean left the storage locker, disappointed that there hadn’t been anything about the curse or about the mysterious Hannah that had written in his father’s journal. 

The years that Sam had been at Stanford had been awful. A week after Sam had left, Dean broke his arm and John dumped him at Caleb’s to recover. No use hunting with a broken son. Four months after the cast had come off, he’d gotten a concussion and been admitted to a hospital until his father came and got him out. He could hardly stand, he’d been so dizzy.

Then they split up, hunted alone. Dad still checked in every day or two, Dean knew that he missed Sam. They both did. And Dean had battled two years of evil on his own, suffering from colds, stab wounds and bruises by himself. Probably because he was alone, not because the curse was punishing him for not looking after Sam. He didn’t want to know if the dates of his injuries and illnesses coincided with events in his brother’s life.

Sam was still sleeping, curled on his side so nothing put pressure on the wound in his shoulder. Dean frowned. Sam was his life. Hell, he was going to die for Sam, he was protecting him. But he cared about the guy, because, just because, not because of some curse.

\--

“Find anything?” Sam asked, slipping his notebook into his bag. 

Dean shrugged. He had already buried his books in the trunk, near the spare parts for the Impala where Sam would never find them. “Let’s go.”

“One second.” Sam snapped a picture of one of the books in his pile with his phone. “I can’t take them. Stealing from a library feels wrong. Bobby probably has it.”

Dean didn’t say that he was looking for information about the curse. Because yeah, this wasn’t his life. If it was his life, he’d be doing other things. He didn’t know what those things would  
be, but that was the curse. He couldn’t imagine life without Sam, life doing things he wanted to do. 

“Are we going to Bobby’s tonight?” Sam asked once they were on the road. It was about a fifteen hour drive, just long enough that they might consider stopping.

“No.” Dean let up on the gas. He didn’t have to do what Sam wanted. And sure, maybe Bobby knew something about this curse, the man certainly wasn’t a fan of his father, but he didn’t have to rush over there just because Sam wanted to.

“Fine. I’m going to do some more research.” Sam pulled his phone and notebook out and started looking through pictures he’d taken earlier.

Dean pulled off the highway six hours later. He was tired and Sam was still playing with his phone, the light from the screen making it just a little bit harder to see the road. 

He stopped at a run down looking motel about a fifteen minute drive into the town. Far enough away from the highway to be cheaper, but close enough that they could avoid traffic in the morning. 

“Here Sam.” He said, getting out and heading to the office to get a room for the night.

He came back with a key to find Sam half in the trunk, an impressive feat for his gigantic brother.

“Something wrong?” Dean asked, pulling out his duffle bag and making sure that there was still a shotgun tucked inside it, he didn’t like the look of this neighbourhood.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Sam extracted himself from the trunk and came out with the papers that Dean had hidden in there. The papers on the curse.

“Nothing to say.” Dean said, turning and heading towards their room. “We’re in eight.”

Sam slammed the trunk down and Dean could hear his feet pounding on the pavement as he hurried to catch up. 

“Nothing, my ass! Dean, you said that you didn’t believe it. That Dad wouldn’t have used the curse on you.”

“Well maybe I’ve changed my mind.” Dean unlocked the door to their room and stormed inside. “Not a crime is it?”

“If it’s bothering you than we should do something about it!”

“Right, like there isn’t something more important to research?”

“You mean like a case Dean? Or your curse? Because apparently that’s all you care about these days!” Sam closed the door to their room and dropped his duffle bag on his usual bed, the one furthest from the door.

“It’s none of your business.” Dean grumbled. “If there’s a cure, I’ll find out about it and I’ll take care of it. It’s not your problem.”

“So it’s a problem.” Sam crossed his arms. “We’re supposed to deal with this together. I can help you. If you have to solve this before you can move onto bigger problems, I’m going to help. Your soul needs all hands on deck Dean.”

“Besides, you said it before, you’re just my brother, nothing more. It’s normal, you took care of me then, you take care of me now. We moved around, we have to keep secrets from the rest of the world.”

“So you’ll just explain it all away? Like logic and normal rules actually applies to our lives? Dad would have done it, he would have done it in a moment. He liked you better, he always did. You almost killed him when you left.” Dean picked his bag back up, he didn’t have to stay here.

“We’re going back to that?” Sam demanded. “Can’t we just leave Dad out of this and track down Hannah? Did you ask Bobby if he’d heard of this?”

Dean shrugged and stopped leaving. “Look Sam, I don’t want to talk about this, I don’t want you to help me with it. You work on whatever you want, but quit bugging me about it. It’s not your life, it’s none of your business.” He stormed out of the room and settled in the front seat of the Impala, it was warm enough to spend the night.

He didn’t sleep well. The car was too short for his legs and every time he managed to drift off, he was haunted by images of his Dad casting herbs into a fire. John Winchester was no slouch when it came to spellwork. 

“Let’s hit the road.” Dean announced, opening the door to room eight as soon as the sun had risen.

Sam turned over in bed, shielding his face with an arm. “Right now?”

“You should probably shower first.” Dean jerked a thumb towards the bathroom, “don’t take too long.”

It didn’t take them nine hours to get to Bobby’s. The roads were empty and Dean kept a heavy foot on the gas until they broke the county limit for Sioux Falls. Bobby had a rule about law breaking on his turf: don’t do it.

Singer Salvage was dark and Dean pounded on the door for almost a full minute before Bobby opened it.

“It’s the damn middle of the night.” The older hunter complained, but he let them in and turned the coffee pot on.

Finally, once they’ve had enough coffee to keep a small company running and the Impala’s been unloaded enough that Dean can’t keep making excuses to dash outside, Bobby sits them down in his living room and demands answers.

“What the hell is going on with you two this time?”

“Did our Dad ever mention a woman named Hannah to you?” Dean asked, pulling out the journal and flipping to the blank page. He’d written out the contents of the page at some point, but by now he had them memorized.

“No, but we weren’t exactly close, especially these past six or seven years.” Bobby yawned and glanced at the blank page. “There supposed to be something there?”

Sam explained and Dean let him. About the curse, about everything that Dad may or may not have done. He showed off Dean’s research, not that any of it was any good. If Dean had found the answer, he would have dropped the issue a long time ago.

“Not familiar with anything like this.” Bobby said when Sam finished, but he was already getting up and flipping through his collection of books, tossing a few at the couch for them to start combing for any useful bit of information.

There was a small stack of books between Dean and Sam and another load in Bobby’s arms by the time the search for material was over. Bobby cracked one open and yawned hard enough to drop it onto the floor.

“If Dean’s been livin’ with this curse for years, there’s no reason we can’t wait until morning.” Bobby said and left the book he dropped sitting on the floor. “The beds are made up in your usual room. Get some sleep. You look exhausted.”

Sam flipped idly through a book for nearly an hour before he mumbled something incoherently and disappeared up the stairs leaving Dean alone. There was still nothing, not in the curse books, not in ancient texts that covered magical geas.

Dean went to bed when the coffee pot was empty. He wasn’t ready to, but a long day of driving and a night of crappy sleep in the Impala was enough to drag his eyelids closed no matter how much coffee he drank.

\--

“Dean, wake up.” Someone was shaking him.

Dean opened his eyes blearily. He was curled up in Bobby’s spare room, nestled between an old sleeping bag and a comforter that had seen better days.

“What Sam?” He asked, pushing his face into the pillow, the light was too bright and his brain was letting him know quite clearly that it was not ready to be awake.

‘I think I found something.”

It should have woken him up more, but the call of sleep was still strong and Dean just turned his face back towards the light a little bit. “About what?”

“About this curse thing, c’mon, get up and come downstairs. You can go back to bed as soon as you read it. I promise.”

That was enough for him to haul his ass out of bed. Dean followed Sam down the stairs and into the living room. He’d lost his shirt at some point and the air was chilly in just a t-shirt.

“Coffee?” Bobby offered him a cup while Sam flipped through a book on the couch.

“Goin’ back to bed.” Dean muttered and stumbled closer to the couch, stifling a yawn.

Sam shoved the book in his face, pointing excitedly. “Here!”

Dean glanced at the page. The letters were tiny and he wasn’t too sure, but they didn’t look like English to him. “Wha’s it say?”

“So get this, the curse has a physical mark associated with it.” Sam pointed to a picture that Dean had missed on his first glance over the page. “Usually it’s a rune like this, something about binding. But it can take on an appearance specific to the intention of the curse.”

“I don’t have a physical mark.” Dean looked down at his hands, just in case one had appeared since he’d woken up.

“Exactly!” Sam proclaimed and put the book down. “I’ll leave the book out for when you actually wake up.”

Dean nodded and trudged back to the bedroom. He was awake now. Somehow he’d been hoping that the curse was real, that maybe he had saved Sam because he’d had too, not just because he couldn’t live without him. This was all on him now. 

The next morning Sam didn’t seem to be in a hurry to leave. He wasn’t coming through websites and he didn’t present Dean with a possible hunt once. Bobby was quiet too, he tossed Dean the key to the workshop in the morning and called him in for supper and that was it.

It was nice. Nothing really going on, no reason to hurry up and get things done with. If Sam had spent his time looking into the deal, he hadn’t said anything, no pressure to deal with it, no worries about the ever smaller number of tomorrows ahead of them.

Dean came to bed last that night. He sat on the back porch, drinking a beer, listening to the mosquitoes buzz around his ears and appreciating the stars in the sky. Stuff he normally didn’t care about. 

“Thanks.” He whispered across the room as he climbed into his bed, trying not to make too much noise.

“You’re welcome.” Sam whispered back. “Want to do something tomorrow?”

Dean shrugged, he could just see the outline of Sam’s head in the darkness. “Not really.”

“That’s okay too.” There was a rustle of blankets and then quiet footsteps on the floor as Sam padded over to him. 

Dean sat up as Sam collapsed heavily on top of him. He shifted a bit, until he could breathe again and returned Sam’s embrace, turning his face so Sam wouldn’t see his tears.

“Hey.” Sam murmured, Dean could feel the words in his chest more than he could hear them.

“I just-”

“It’s okay.” Sam carded his fingers through Dean’s hair. “We’re going to sort this out. I can take care of you too, don’t forget. It works both ways. I’m gonna get you through this.”

Dean nodded into Sam’s shoulder, his tears smearing on the old t-shirt.

“We’ll do something tomorrow. Something fun, something easy, okay?” Sam’s hand moved off his head and stroked in circles on his back. “Fishing?”

“You hate fishing.” Dean mumbled, pulling away a little. He was tired and this release left him feeling ready for bed.

“I’ll put it with it.” Sam replied and he stretched out on the small bed, an arm still wrapped around his brother. “You put up with me.”


End file.
